Amazon Patents Electronic Gifting

theodp writes "Simply giving your mother an e-book for her birthday could constitute patent infringement now that the USPTO's gone and awarded Amazon.com a patent on the 'Electronic Gifting' of items such as music, movies, television programs, games, or books. BusinessInsider speculates that the patent may be of concern to Facebook, which just dropped a reported $80 million on social gift-giving app maker Karma Science."

Comments

Prior Art

[nurb432]

*yawn* if this gets awarded, it will fall in court the first time its used against someone.

Re:Prior Art

[Alain Williams]

No: Amazon just picks the first few targets carefully ... targets that cannot afford the $5,000,000 lawyers fees to defend against the bloody obvious, so they give in. Then with a few precedents under their belt they are better armed to go against bigger fish. Even if they loose they can cause mayhem at a competitor in the 2 years that it takes to litigate.

Re:Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

That's complete nonsense, settlements are not precedent, kind of like how slashdot is not law school.

Re:Prior Art

[amoeba1911]

It is not the educated engineers and programmers that patent this crap, they just implement it and the sleaze bag managers and lawyers do the rest.

Re:Prior Art

[ProfBooty]

Indeed the examiner cited a whole bunch of prior art, including:

PRwire; "Matchmaker.com Creates Business Development Unit for Gift Sales"; Jan. 20, 2000: pp. 1 and 2. cited by examiner .
"GiftCardSwapping.com"; http://web.archive.org/web/20070520051410/http://www.giftcardswapping.com- /; Sunday, May 20, 2007; p. 1. cited by examiner .
"Gift Card Exchange, Buy Gift Card, Discount Gift Cards, Cash Gift Card Swap"; http://web.archive.org/web/20080724163511/http:giftcardrescue.com/- ; Apr. 12, 2008-Jul. 11, 2011; pp. 1-3. cited by examiner .
"CBLS.www.cbls.com.(World Web Watch)."; Advanced Materials & Processes, v160, n6; Jun. 2002; p. 1. cited by examiner .
"Eugene Science"; Edgar Online; May 23, 2006; pp. 1-5. cited by examiner .
Mathieu, Elizabeth; "Opinion: Delaware: An unparalleled home for your trust"; Private Asset Management, v5, n20; Oct. 5, 1998; pp. 1 and 2. cited by examiner .
US Fed News Service, Including US State News;"Publication No. WO/2009/109949 Published on Sep. 11, Assigned to France Telecom for Electronic Gifting System (American Inventor)"; Sep. 15, 2009; p. 1. cited by examiner

There a whole load more patent documents listed in the patent as prior art.

Anyways, if sued I would probably just request a re-exam by the office, its only a couple of thousand bucks.

Re:Prior Art

[Theaetetus]

Steam uses gifting, as does gamersgate. So prior art already exists.

Contrary to the Slashdot assertion, this is not a patent on "gifting". This is a patent on a gifting system that doesn't bill the gift giver until the gift is accepted, and allows the giver to cancel the gift if the recipient has not accepted it in time. Steam and Gamersgate (as well as the Wii Store, iTunes, etc.) all charge the giver immediately. Not only are they not anticipatory prior art, they also don't infringe.

Re:Prior Art

[cusco]

Because the executives of any of the big fish would rather die than spend the small amount of money to help their competition, since it might reduce the short-term profits that their bonuses and options rely on. Better that the entire company go down the tubes in the long run, since they'll have moved to a different employer by then. That's the game of Executive Musical Chairs that we have today, brought to us by the MBA disease.

This Patent won't live long...

[dryriver]

Giving gifts to others is something people have done for thousands of years. Doing the same thing electronically? No different, unless there is some ingenious new mechanism being used. -------- If that isn't the case, this patent is worth nothing, and will likely be overturned at the first opportunity.